


Two Steps Forward

by intentioncraft



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Benny POV, Brief Sexuality, Domesticity, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, canon AU, references to alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 06:27:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2571497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intentioncraft/pseuds/intentioncraft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You off the wagon?” He doesn’t mean it to sound like an accusation.</p>
<p>Dean shakes his head violently, and responds angrily, “No, Jesus,” his eyes are bloodshot and his face and neck are pale and flushed, freckles standing out on his nose and cheeks to make him look like a misbehaved child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Steps Forward

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to [tumblr](http://intentioncrafts.tumblr.com/post/94827820803/dean-benny-au-or-canon-au-idk-1-5k-pg-brief).

He doesn’t even hear Dean come in the door, and Dean made that door good and loud for a reason, and he doesn’t hear him move through their small living room to the kitchen. Thinking too much lately, it muffles his senses. So nothing registers until Benny feels hands around his shoulders, on his chest, his arms, sliding lower and lower until there’s a palm down his pants massaging him through his underwear. Dean’s soft hair tickles the side of his face, stubble rasping over the material of Benny’s shirt and his hot breaths flash over Benny’s skin where it peeking out of the collar of his shirt.

Benny glances at the clock on the microwave. It’s just past four in the afternoon, “You’re home a bit early. Wasn’t expectin’ you till almost five.”

“Mm,” Dean grunts just below Benny’s ear.

“Everything okay?” Benny asks next, “You get stood up?”

Dean doesn’t answer the question, and he’s still for a moment or two before his hands resume their work on Benny’s cock, stroking roughly enough that Benny starts to harden in his pants and his concentration starts to drift away from the jerkiness in Dean’s movements, the graceless, clumsy way he cages Benny’s body against the kitchen counter like he’s trying desperately to keep them both from tumbling to the floor even though Benny is planted quite firmly on his feet.

A beeping kitchen timer breaks up the sounds of heavy breathing and gasping. Dean’s attention drifts for a second to the stove where there’s dinner cooking and Benny uses that moment to spin himself around and put an arm’s length distance between himself and Dean, palms on Dean’s shoulders, holding him back so he can get a good look at him.

“You off the wagon?” He doesn’t mean it to sound like an accusation.

Dean shakes his head violently, and responds angrily, “No, Jesus,” his eyes are bloodshot and his face and neck are pale and flushed, freckles standing out on his nose and cheeks to make him look like a misbehaved child. But he’s close enough that Benny can’t detect anything on Dean’s breath but what smells like nachos for lunch.

“Hey, just askin’, chief,” Benny says, holding up one hand defensively. The other stays over Dean’s shoulder, thumb moving back and forth. Dean notices, or maybe he just needs a reason to look away from Benny’s face, because he turns his head to the side and watches Benny’s thumb caress the two inch arc of skin under the rucked up sleeve of his t-shirt. He blinks twice and takes a deep breath, shoulders loosening, diminishing in front of Benny’s eyes.

“Could use a drink, though,” Dean chokes out bitterly and keeps his eyes on Benny’s hand.

“Sorry, Dean. Dry as a desert in here, and it’s staying that way,” he says gently, and then asks again, “Everything okay? Something happen at your appointment?”

Dean chews his bottom lip, the skin flashing shades of white and red enough to make Benny’s throat tighten, and stares at their feet, averting his eyes. But with Benny leaning against the counter-top and Dean having a good two inches on him anyway, Benny can still see a tear shaking on his eyelid a second before it falls to the floor and soaks into the braided rug.

At last, Dean says, “Rough day. Started talking about —,” he clears his throat, like moving a mountain, and claps Benny on the shoulder opposite to the one under Benny’s hand, “Sorry about — yeah,” he brushes off Benny’s shirt like he got something on him and looks down at Benny’s half-hard cock bulging against his pants.

Benny forces himself to laugh softly, “Don’t worry about it. No time for that. Got dinner to make anyway. I need to keep you fed, don’t I?” he winks.

Dean’s lips pull up in a rueful smirk and he sniffles once before pulls away and stumbles across the room before collapsing into one of the dining room chairs they picked up at the second-hand furniture store in town, beside the diner that Dean had declared had one of the top five lemon meringue pies in the country. He held some out on a fork for Benny to try, even though human food didn’t do much for him but leave him feeling a bit tired, and made airplane noises until Benny’s lips closed around the fork and he admitted that, yes, it was good.

And Dean just stared at him

“‘Good’,” he repeated flatly.

“Yeah,” Benny used his finger to wipe some excess cream from his beard and then transferred it to a napkin while Dean watched in horror as if he’d just dumped an entire pie into the trash.

“Just ‘good’?”

“Yeah?”

“’Good’ — holy shit, man, if I told you you were ‘just good’ in bed, you still gonna sleep with me tonight?”

“Well, see, we only have one bed.”

“Oh, Shut up,” Dean threw his bunched up napkin at Benny’s nose and grabbed the plate with the slice of half-eaten lemon meringue pie with both hands and slid it over to his side of the table, shielding it from Benny’s poor opinion and then speared it furiously with his fork, “Guess this is what I should’ve expected from a guy who prefers new ‘tallica to old because you can ‘finally understand what those fellas are shouting about’. You have unrefined taste, my friend.”

“I’ll remember that. Next time I’m watchin’ your — what’s it called — telly novellas —”

“ _Telenovela_ ,” Dean hissed and jumped so hard the salt and pepper shakers rattled in their wire holder. He glanced around the small diner with wide eyes to ensure nobody was listening to their conversation. When he turned back to Benny he had a put on, mollifying smile on his face “Right. Fine. Sorry?”

Smiling, Benny could only respond with, “You got it, chief. Now finish up so we can get out of here and keep looking for stuff for the dining room,” because watching Dean enjoy his pie was far more enjoyable than eating the pie for himself.

Recall moments like these ones when the going gets rough — that’s what Dean’s sobriety coach Daniel had said, the exact same message Dean passed along from his therapist after one of his very first sessions a few months ago. Not to focus on the memory alone and ignore the present, but to keep in mind how things can be, how things are more often than not these days, and most of all to remain focused on the future which isn’t yet decided.

Putting a lid on the pasta boiling in the pot on the stove, Benny turns down the heat and moves the chair on the other side of the table so he’s sitting directly in front of Dean who’s got his hands clasped and hanging between his legs like he’s praying. Benny knows Dean used to pray a ton, but he doesn’t anymore.

“Remember, Dean. I’m here, just like you are for me when I’m in a bad way.”

“Yeah, well,” Dean says hoarsely, “Difference between you and me is you can’t help what you are. I mean, you fuck up, or have a shitty day — that’s just your nature. The fuck’s my excuse?”

He doesn’t exactly have a heartbeat to speak of, but something constricts in Benny’s chest, makes it difficult for him to remain neutral. Dean says things — always tinted with that trademark self-deprecation — that gets others right where they’re most vulnerable, like getting nailed by shrapnel.

But they’ve been together and working on this long enough that Benny knows Dean’s defence mechanisms like a sad song that won’t get out of his head.

Benny shifts closer so his knees bump against Dean’s, “I dunno about nature, to be quite honest. But I wasn’t always a vampire, remember? It happened to me, made me the upstanding citizen I am today. And that’s not an excuse,” Benny says. He keeps his voice soft, but it all comes out tighter than he’d life,  “Gotta remind myself alway that if I tear out some poor fuck’s throat, that’s on me,” he says evenly, but there’s a sob rising up in his throat so he gets on with his point, “And since I’m guessin’ you didn’t come out of your momma with your fist around the neck of a bottle.”

Dean scoffs, “Only ’bout twelve years after.”

“Doesn’t matter how soon. It happened to you, and it made you who you are. It’s not an excuse. It just is, and we do what we can with it.”

Dean’s fingers, woven together, flatten out and he stares at his interconnected palms, “Benny —”

“You don’t have to tell me about what happened today. That’s between you and your doctor,” he covers Dean’s hands with one of his own and goes to stand, pulling Dean up with him, “Just be honest with yourself and try not to hide from it,” he says, and then adds with a quirk of his lips, “And maybe call me before you get home on days like this if you need a sit-down with me. Or a cuddle.”

Dean allows himself to be led, “Aren’t you supposed to be cooking?” he sways on his feet into Benny’s space and Benny covers the remainder of the distance between them to kiss Dean long and slow.

“I’ll be done in five if you wanna go to the couch and find your show. There’s still about a half hour left.” 

 


End file.
